[Review]Mushkin 650 Watt PSU

When I first heard Mushkin was getting into the Power Supply Business I admit, I was a little skeptical, and a little surprised, when I found it was no rumor. Indeed, Mushkin is taking the plunge into a new market for them. Today, we are taking a look at the first PSU to come with the Mushkin name attached, and see how well it holds up.

The PSU market at the moment seems a little volatile, with the need for high end power demands, from CPU’s, Dual Core Processors, more and more ram, and Dual Videocards, bigger and faster hard drives… it seems what was fine just a short year and half ago, seems kind of plain by today’s hardware needs.

Mushkin has always been known for making quality products, and as far as I am aware of, have pretty much stayed to the RAM market. But I must admit, I was happy to think of a PSU coming from Mushkin, cause I hope it’s up to the usual quality I have come use to over the years from some of their other products I have used.

The PSU comes with a dark metal finish, shiny, much like the OCZ Powerstream PSUs appearance. The case of the PSU has a Mushkin Logo stamped into the side of the metal, and has a excellent finish, and over all “feel”.

The pic here, does nothing to show the finish of the Power Supply itself, but I must note, I had a difficult time taking these pics due to the fact that the SPU itself is rather shiny, and would just reflect the light of the flash and make the picture unusable most of the time.

Here’s the part that seems to be the most confusing to people… four 12 volt rails, each with 20 amps… makes one think they have 80 amps available.

That would be amazing if it were true, but that would also means this PSU was well above the 650 watt rating… so this is where people seem to get the most confused with this particular PSU.

Well, I took the time to ask the guys at Mushkin to help me clear this up, and this was the Response.

"The unit is capable of supplying 44A sustained on the the +12V line. Each rail is capable of handling 20A individually, but not all at once. If the draw on any one rail exceeds 20A, the PSU goes in to RailFusion mode to avoid the overcurrent trip point."

So there you have it, simple and straight to the point. But I am sure, this will confuse a lot of people in the market for a new power supply.

There is a nice clear view of the Modular connections for the various power cables. The blue connections are PCI Express videocard connections. After some trial and error, I came to the conclusion that I really liked the Modular connection, simply cause now I no longer have cables that are unused to worry about cluttering up my case.

The Fan in the power supply is very quiet and is lit with Green LED’s. The rail fusion light, can be seen beside the power switch, and when activated, the Rail Fusion light will come on to let you know it’s active.

And finally, the Muskin Stamp… just seems to give it a nice touch. Overall, the PSU and the contents, just seem to have a great deal of quality and thought to it. So far, I must admit, I was happy with my initial impressions of this Power Supply.

I read the voltages from multiple sources, to get an idea of how different voltage readings can be, when going from one method to another.

For testing Purposes, I used the voltages reported within Windows, so I could easily track the information over a long period of time, and testing.

For the record, I wanted to use the multimeter testing as well, but I could not find a way to test the 3.3 volt line, without having to cut a wire or something, so I will only say this about the Multimeter testing that I did.

The 12 volt line at idle reads 12.04 volts… when under load, it read 12.02.

The 5 volt line at idle reads 5.04 volts, under load, it still read 5.04 volts.

I could not test load, with the 3.3 volt line, when the PSU was actually connected to the motherboard, so that is why I chose to use the voltage readings reported in Windows.

Stress testing was done by 3 means. Running Prime 95 over both cores over night. Running Memtest for a few hours straight, and Looping 3DMark2006 for 50 runs back to back at my monitors maximum resolution and antialiasing, to put as much stress as I could on the videocards and their power needs.

As you can see here, the 5 volt line, and 3.3 volt line are solid, so solid, that I honestly never saw even a minor drop on the 5 volt line, and very rarely would I see a 3.3 volt line drop to 3.28. Needless to say, the rails are extremely solid, almost perfect even.

The 12 volt line, 95% of the time, had little to no variation, and indeed spent the majority of its time at 11.71 volts, but occasionally would fall as low as 11.65 volts. This is well within the 5% tolerance limit most power supplies are rated for.

However I would also like to say, that while the voltages reported in windows, would drop by as much as .06 volts, actual voltage meter averaging, never went below 12.02 volts. Personally I am more inclined to believe my multimeter. I just wanted to include the various voltage reading methods, to show how much they can vary from source to source.

The 12 volt rail offers a great deal of versatility with the option of going to a single 12 volt rail if the need comes up.

Cons:

- No adjustable rails.
- Slightly confusing 12 volt rail label.

After the last week of having this PSU, I have to admit, I am surprised at the quality and stability it’s offered me so far, and I have one other thing to mention. Previously to using this Power Supply, I was using a nice high quality 600 watt PSU, and I was skeptical that this would provide me any real benefits.

Well, I was proven wrong the first moment I tried to overclock with this PSU in my PC. See my previous PSU topped out at 3.07 GHz stable max. Under no condition, could I previously get 3.1 GHz stable. With this new Mushkin PSU, I was easily able to get 3.1 GHz stable, and not just screen shot stable, but game and prime 95 stable. To me, this really hints that my PC was a real candidate for getting some additional power to use.

But at the same time, this PSU has been consistently providing me with a level of stability I had been unable to do, just a few days before getting this PSU.

I must say, I am impressed with the final result of this power supply, and I am glad to see the quality, is well worth the Mushkin name. At first I was skeptical of hearing a ram company getting into such a demanding market as power supplies are, but now, I would easily recommend these to any friend that needed some additional power, and I myself, and very excited at the prospect of seeing some higher power, PSU’s coming from Mushkin in the future.

I give this PSU a 9, for only 1 reason, if it were perfect, it would have had the adjustable rails in there for overclockers who like to have a little tweaking option for extra power if they want to push it a little.

But honestly, this is such a small thing to mention, that it really cannot be called a drawback, more like a feature most people would never ask for, except a few overclockers. When all is said and done however, it really comes down to how solid is the PSU and how reliably can it deliver the voltages without significant drops when under load. That is where this PSU will deliver and do it perfectly.

Mushkin has delivered a good solid PSU, and if your in the market for a new Power Supply, next time you might give the Mushkin ones a second look.